1. Technical Field
The invention relates to nanotechnology. In particular, the invention relates to nanostructures fabricated using electrochemical deposition techniques and to sensors using the nanostructures.
2. Description of Related Art
A consistent trend in semiconductor technology since its inception is toward smaller and smaller device dimensions and higher and higher device densities. As a result, an area of semiconductor technology that recently has seen explosive growth and generated considerable interest is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is concerned with the fabrication and application of so-called nano-scale structures, structures having at least one linear dimension between 1 nm and 200 nm. These nano-scale structures are often 50 to 100 times smaller than conventional semiconductor structures and potentially can be fabricated less expensively by using ‘bottom-up’, self-assembly techniques.
Nanowires are building blocks of many potential nano-scale devices, such as nano-scale field effect transistors (FETs), p-n diodes, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and nanowire-based sensors, to name a few. There are many techniques known in the art for growing or forming nanowires. However, the area of nanotechnology needs ways to improve the robustness of nanowires for reproducible mass-fabrication of nano-scale devices in a manufacturing environment.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a nano-scale device providing robust nanowire-based enhanced sensing capability, and techniques to achieve the enhancements, which are conducive to a ‘bottom-up’ fabrication approach to the device. Such a nano-scale device and techniques would solve a long-standing need in the developing area of nanotechnology.